Before and after 2025, the industry is expected to stabilize after four years of adjustment
Official number 01. 01113:57 of the first financial and economic officer's network i
In 2025, the market contained the downward spiral risk and initially achieved the stabilization goal。
It has been more than four years since the second half of 2021 since the current round of real estate adjustments. Just over 2025 was a crucial year for the industry to embark on steady rehabilitation and for the policy to move from “to bottom-up relief” to overall confidence-building and activation of housing needs。
A number of key industry data during the year showed that real estate “sliding back and down” had some effect. According to institutional data, in 2025 the size of commercial houses was reduced by a narrow margin compared to the previous year, with an estimated 890 million square metres of sales and a sales volume of $8. 4 trillion for the entire year, including a 4 per cent and 18 per cent increase in terms of the four quarters of 100 urban new houses。
The real “thermometer” of the mood in the building — the market for second-hand houses — has entered the “market-deep” area this year, with the new market and second-hand houses forming a distinct operating system, with significant differences in prices, customers, etc. Owing to such factors as high listings, the price of stock houses has been steadily declining, with the demand for new sources becoming the main source of trade and leading to increased turnover。
“in 2025, with a series of policy interventions, the housing market temporarily contained the downward spiral risk and initially achieved the goal of stabilizing the decline. The institutional report shows that the deep structural inventory problem, the anticipated consolidation of housing prices, is still not fully resolved, and that there is expected to be room for policy dynamism in 2026, with markets entering the “weak recovery, slow balance, deep fragmentation” bottom-up phase。
All efforts to clean up restrictive policies
In 2025, the policy thrust of the real estate sector was to clean up restrictive measures and facilitate the release of housing needs。
As of 1 december, over 560 policies had been introduced in more than 210 provinces and municipalities (countys) throughout the country, with the frequency of their optimization decreasing from 2024, focusing mainly on specific initiatives to activate demand and optimize supply。
In order to activate the demand of home buyers, local efforts have been directed mainly at cleaning up restrictive measures, optimizing equity loans, increasing subsidies for house purchases and reducing taxes on housing transactions, with a view to continuously reducing the cost of home purchases and releasing potential home purchases into the market。
At the end of december, beijing launched a new city policy to further ease restrictive policies, optimise the acquisition restrictions, credit, public reserve loans, etc., reduce the non-household household social security/tax age requirement and eliminate the distinction between first and second-class loan rates。
As the “highlands” regulated by the national building city, policies such as successive liberalization of the purchase restrictions in beijing are highly representative and mean that the city has entered an era of essentially unreasonable restrictions on cleaning. Among other cities, guangzhou has completely eliminated the restrictions on purchases, sales and prices, shanghai has eased the restrictions on suburban purchases, shenzhen has eased the restrictions on non-core purchases, and the policy has been gradually improving。
To date, the down payment rate at the national level, the interest rate on mortgages has fallen to historically low levels, and there has been a significant liberalization of the provident fund lending policy. First-line and core second-line cities have gradually eased the many-year-old procurement restrictions, and some regional or improved demand restrictions have been lifted。
Tax and fee reduction policies at the national level are also working to facilitate market transactions and create a replacement chain. For example, the new policy issued by the ministry of finance, which reduced the value added tax collection rate for the external sale of housing by individuals for less than two years from 5 per cent to 3 per cent, significantly reduced the transaction costs for second-hand houses, thereby accelerating the flow of transactions and increasing the activity of second-hand houses。
While activating market demand, stockhouse “de-stock” initiatives are also under way to promote a rebalancing of market supply and demand。
By the end of november, more than 4,800 land had been declared to be used for the recovery of unoccupied land, with a total area of over 250 million square metres and a total amount of over 65 billion yuan. With regard to the acquisition of stock houses, a number of purchase projects landed, such as the cumulative acquisition of 29,000 housing stock units in guangxi as of early september。
At the same time, a multi-pronged approach to stock-taking, incremental control and good supply is being pursued in each locality. In the annual housing development plan, the elements of “human, housing, land, money” are being linked to a mechanism for clarifying and optimizing the scale and structure of supply. In beijing, for example, where the integration of towns and cities has been explicitly increased, the “three colours” of land supply management mechanisms have been deepened and “good houses” are being built。
According to the institute, the precision of the national real estate policy improved significantly in 2025, moving away from the “one-size-fits-all” regulatory model of the past and developing differentiated policies based on market supply and demand, trends in population movements and stock levels. The first-line urban policy focuses on “marginal optimization, steady laxity” and the second-line urban policy on “general relaxation, precision stimulus”。
The city is "up and down."
As a result of the policy of a number of rotation controls, the city has experienced a number of changes this year。
According to kerry, the market was warming in the first quarter of this year, with the “sun spring” peaking in march, and another round of concentrated eruptions between mid-may and june, with immediate and partial demand improvement rapidly entering and high turnover in july and august. By the fourth quarter, there had been a small increase of 4 per cent in the area of 100 urban new houses, of which 18 per cent had been added in december。
In terms of the size of the new home trade throughout the year, the agency indicated that in 2025 it was expected to sell approximately 890 million square metres and to sell 8. 4 trillion yuan, a decrease of 9 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, of which the decrease in the area sold was 4 percentage points narrower than in the previous year. “in the second half of 2024, the volume of trade in the industry has risen significantly, and in 2025 the volume of trade in new houses has been reduced by a narrow margin in line with better market expectations.”
Improved housing demand is an important support for the new housing market this year. According to data from the medium-mean monitoring, the percentage of new home deals over 120 m2 in 30 cities has continued to increase since 2025, with 120 - 144 m2 of households accounting for over 30 per cent. In terms of total terms of sale, the previous november saw a 38 per cent and 22 per cent increase in the number of new home exchanges in beijing and shanghai between 10 and 20 million, respectively。
Nevertheless, after a four-year in-depth adjustment cycle, the overall size of the new housing market is now nearly 50 per cent lower than its peak in 2021. During the entire “1455” period, the institute indicated that the total area sold for the construction of new commercial houses in the country during the period was approximately 5. 8 billion square metres, down 25 per cent from the “1355” and down by about 50 per cent from its historical height in 2025。
Once high-growth, large-scale real estate enterprises are also becoming “skinned” in their industry cycles. By the end of 2025, there were only 10 industrial sales of over 100 billion housing enterprises, in order of importance, such as the poly development, chinese-haitian production, chinese-based landlords, shopkeepers, green city china, huanco property, construction of real estates, china kim mau, viet su estates and liang gang。
Compared to the constant “scrawnyness” of the market for new houses, the second-hand house market has become the “dominant battleground” of the market。
According to kerry, the second-hand house market was no longer a simple association with the new house last year, but rather a well-defined “two-track operation” system, with marked deviations in price systems, client groups, and circulation logic. The gradual disappearance of the new “price-limited anchor” and the gradual disappearance of the “price-backed” with the surrounding second-hand room resulted in the real entry of second-hand house prices into the “marketed depth”。
The second-hand chamber has shown a trend of “up and down before steady” throughout the year as a result of the transactional trend, which has stabilized the base plate. According to kardashian monitoring data, in 2025, the country's 30-year-old secondary housing stock was approximately 214 million square metres, 1. 85 times the size of the new one, a slight 0. 2 per cent increase over the same level, again at a new level since the industrial restructuring of 2021。
According to the institute for easis studies, as of november 2025, the cumulative number of second-hand dwellings in four cities in the northward and deepest regions reached 51,9021 units throughout the year, not only exceeding the same level in 2024 (4,96532), but also exceeding the 510,000 level for the first time in nearly four years, reaching the third highest level in nearly nine years, after 2020 and 2021。
“the positive trend in the trading of second-hand houses in the first-line cities is positive, and it marks a steady recovery in the market after three consecutive years of cyclical depth adjustment in 2022, with a clear and robust recovery trajectory.” according to the institute, the market fundamentals have been actively rehabilitated and demand released when price adjustments have been made。
2026 continues to go to stock steady
While the fall in the city in 2025 has been positive and has stabilized the overall size of the deal, some deep-seated problems remain。
Ei stated that after a boom that continued to climb in 2016-2021, real estate in 2022-2025 went through a rare four-year downward spiral, amply demonstrating that markets were in the process of profound adjustment. The drop of four years is directly linked to significant changes in real estate supply-demand relationships and warns of the risk of inadequate demand in the market。
The institute stated that, to date, the trade in second-hand houses was generally on a good scale and that a situation analysis of the sales market needed to integrate the new second-hand rooms and take them rationally. At the same time, there is a need to recognize that there is insufficient potential demand for housing, and to follow up on this by working on the further release of policy effects and on demand extraction, with particular emphasis on “de-stocking”。
The recent policy of reducing the taxes and fees charged for second-hand house transactions is an example of the current problems in the market. In industry, the price of second-hand homes has increased for two months in a row, and the de-diversion of good housing projects has declined, and the shift towards “price competition” has begun; the market cycle has been blocked, demand for “sold for new” replacements has declined, and improvements have been hampered。
As a result, in 2026, when the new arrivals arrived, the real estate sector continued to experience a steady fall。
It refers to the institute's belief that 2026 is the year when the “fifty-fifty-fifty five” began, and that the central economic work conference was fully deployed to the 2026 economy, emphasizing the need for firm confidence to make a good start on the “fifty-five five”. Real estate, as one of the largest domestic demand, will continue to play an important role in expanding domestic demand, and it is expected that policy measures will continue to be implemented。
It is also argued that 2026 is a critical year for the continued exploitation of market demand, especially in the areas of urban village upgrading, retrofitting of dilapidated houses, support for the purchase of housing by disadvantaged groups, and the diversion of second-hand landlords for the release of demand, and that the construction of good houses will be more regular and attractive and will contribute significantly to the development of the marketing market。
At the same time, the “go-to-stock” exercise in 2026 will be accelerated or more robust and precise policies will be put in place. The central economic work conference has identified inventory orientation as a tool to prevent risk and stabilize the city. As a follow-up, local efforts may be intensified to collect stock of commodity houses as a source of housing security and to achieve faster reductions in stock size。
In the long run, there is still room for the development of our real estate sector. According to the estimates, the total urban housing demand for the country during the “155” period was approximately 4. 98 billion square metres. In addition to marketed commercial housing, guaranteed housing, etc., will absorb part of the increased demand, with a combined conversion rate of 70 to 80 per cent, with an annual average of 700 to 800 million square metres estimated for the next five years。
“the deep-seated structural inventory problems, housing price expectations, etc. In the industry have not yet been fully addressed, and the restoration of market confidence still requires a longer process.” according to kerry, looking ahead to 2026, the market as a whole will move into a phase of “weak recovery, moderate balance, deep fragmentation”, reshaping the new balance of supply and demand in the market based on policy continuity and stability, and achieving high-quality development in the real estate sector。
